The Peshtigo Fire Museum houses artifacts from the 1871 Peshtigo Fire, the deadliest forest fire in American history, plus items from the late 19th and early 20th century. Chelsey Lewis/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

A mass grave in the cemetery outside the Peshtigo Fire Museum contains the bodies of 350 people killed in the 1871 Peshtigo Fire, the deadliest in American history. Chelsey Lewis/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

On the night of Oct. 8, 1871, a devastating forest fire ripped through Peshtigo and the surrounding area, killing 1,500 people and destroying a swath of land 10 miles wide and 40 miles long. It was the deadliest forest fire in American history. But that same night, a fire in Chicago grabbed headlines and attention, overshadowing the deadlier Wisconsin blaze.

Peshtigo rebuilt, but it would never be the same. At its height, it was Wisconsin's 10th largest city. Its population today barely tops 3,000. Marinette County covers 1,550 square miles but only has a population of just over 41,000. While some towns, especially those in the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest, draw vacationers to lakeside cabins and campgrounds, the county barely made the Top 20 for tourism spending in Wisconsin in 2017, according to the Department of Tourism.

This northeastern county of Wisconsin could be called the forgotten corner of the state.

Squeezed up alongside Green Bay and Michigan's Upper Peninsula, it's a county of small towns and two-lane roads. Marinette, the county seat and largest city, is east of most of the national and state forest attractions and sits on the bay as a quiet working town with a population of just 10,000.

Marinette County bills itself as the waterfall capital of Wisconsin, with more than a dozen named falls. I spent my time in the area last summer chasing those waterfalls, a scenic trip along dirt roads and in small county parks.

This summer my dart landed southeast of most of those falls, near Peshtigo, so I drove up Lake Michigan to explore the cities.

On the way, I stopped in Oconto to check out Copper Culture State Park, one of the few state parks I had never been to.

The little state park is just 42 acres and has only a few miles of hiking trails along the Oconto River. It's really more of a historic site than a park, and an important one at that. A National Historic Landmark, it protects the oldest cemetery in Wisconsin, dating back more than 5,000 years when the area was occupied by the Copper Culture people. The tribe were some of the state's earliest human inhabitants and made tools and jewelry using copper from Michigan's Upper Peninsula.

Dick Doeren was staffing the park's small museum, housed in a farmhouse built by a Belgium immigrant in 1924, when I visited.

A museum at Copper Culture State Park is housed in a home built by a Belgium immigrant in 1924.(Photo: Chelsey Lewis/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)

"These people were here 4,000 years before the Great Pyramids of Egypt," he told me, explaining how they were some of the first known metalsmiths in the world. He handed me a couple of copper spear points to hold — before telling me they were between 4,000 and 8,000 years old.

"(The site) is really unique and different — kind of lost in time," he said.

America's deadliest forest fire

Lost in time seemed to be the theme for this trip.

The next morning, I headed to the Peshtigo Fire Museum to learn more about the Forgotten Fire.

Sally Kahl, a museum volunteer, gave me an overview of the fire, explaining how a prolonged drought and 50 mph winds conspired to whip brush fires and smoldering peat fires into the deadly conflagration. Add in old growth white pine surrounding the town, the country's largest woodenware factory and streets paved with sawdust and "it was a disaster waiting to happen," Kahl said.

She said that when the wind reached Peshtigo, it topped 100 mph and had begun to spin in a counterclockwise circle to create a firestorm that was 3 miles across and 1,000 feet high.

"If I could describe it, it's like a tornado, only it's fire," Kahl said. "A tornado moves on … a fire storm doesn't move on. It stays in one place until it burns everything."

To survive, people fled to the Peshtigo River that ran through town. But many were afraid to go in since they couldn't swim. Every living creature in the area swarmed the river — thrashing cows and horses, deer, terrified humans. Some died on the banks; others died from hypothermia while waiting for hours in the cold water.

Newspapers, including the Milwaukee Sentinel, called it "Wisconsin's Great Holocaust." This was before the Holocaust of World War II; according to Merriam-Webster, a holocaust is defined as "a thorough destruction involving extensive loss of life especially through fire."

The museum, which is housed in the first church that was built after the fire, has a few artifacts from the fire, including items unearthed in 1995 when a drugstore in town put on an addition: a petrified Bible, melted glassware and a glob of petrified blackberries that looks like a piece of coal. The rest of the museum is a time capsule of late 19th- and early 20th-century life in the area.

Outside, a cemetery has a mass grave where 350 victims, many burned beyond recognition, were buried.

A mass grave in the cemetery outside the Peshtigo Fire Museum contains the bodies of 350 people killed in the 1871 Peshtigo Fire, the deadliest in American history.(Photo: Chelsey Lewis/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)

Plaques next to gravestones throughout the cemetery share horrifying stories of survivors and victims. One tells the story of the Mellen children. When the fire started, 19-year-old James Mellen took his two younger siblings into the river, walking in up to his neck with a child on each arm.

"The fierce heat compelled him to keep on wetting their hair or ducking their heads under water. This continued for nearly four hours," the plaque says. When the fire finally subsided, he brought them to shore only to find they both had died of hypothermia.

One plaque details "large black objects resembling balloons which revolved with great rapidity, advancing along the periphery of the fire. When these objects struck a tree or a house, they would burst with a loud report and fire would stream out in all directions."

Witnesses reported seeing one of these fire balls strike and kill a family huddling together in the middle of a large farm field outside town.

It's hard to grasp the true magnitude of the destruction, but these stories are a starting point and were the most haunting part of the museum.

Water, water everywhere

I reflected on some of them with a walk outside town on the Peshtigo Harbor Wildlife Area Trails.

The trails would be better explored on skis or snowshoes in the winter — in the summer, they are overgrown and a mosquito and tick haven as they run alongside the Lower Peshtigo River where it meets Green Bay.

Trails in the Peshtigo Harbor Wildlife Area wind along the Peshtigo River as it meanders into Green Bay.(Photo: Chelsey Lewis/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)

Water is definitely the center of attention in this part of the state, whether it’s chasing waterfalls to the west or fishing in the bay to the east. In Peshtigo and to the north in Marinette where I was staying, nearly every other truck seemed to be hauling a fishing boat or have kayaks strapped to its top.

But the history of the area is important, too. I got a final dose in Marinette, where I stayed at the Lauerman House Inn. The bed and breakfast in a 1910 Colonial Revival mansion overlooking the Menominee River is owned by Jean Moore, who also owns a Victorian bed and breakfast about half a mile away.

The Lauerman was built by Joseph Lauerman, the owner of Lauerman Brothers Department Store in town; his name still adorns the old department store building on Hall St. downtown.

Another big name in town is Stephenson. There's the public library, a bank and an island all named in honor of Isaac Stephenson, a politician and lumberman at the turn of the 20th century. The island is home to a park and logging museum.

Like Peshtigo, Marinette was a logging town. But unlike Peshtigo, it averted complete destruction during the fire and was able to house survivors in makeshift hospitals and send food to the town seven miles south.

It feels very Wisconsin that this part of the state is so overlooked and the deadly fire so forgotten. We Wisconsinites are not a showy bunch and are content to put our heads down, get our work done, and enjoy what our lovely state has to offer without need for affirmation or attention from elsewhere.

In this forgotten corner of the state, I had found a slice of that important part of Wisconsin.

If you go: The museum at Copper Culture State Park, 260 Copper Culture Way, Oconto, is open from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily, Memorial Day through Labor Day. A state parks sticker is not required for admission.

Rooms at The Lauerman House Inn, 1975 Riverside Ave., Marinette, start at $100 per night during the week, which includes a scrumptious breakfast. Note that the bed and breakfast is next to active railroad tracks; if you're a light sleeper, choose a room on the other side of the house.